This Just In

Little Known Facts 4 Comments

Globe and Mail;

One in five Canadian adolescents ages 12 to 15 has been drunk at least once, and has tried marijuana, according to a study released yesterday by Statistics Canada.
The study, based on interviews with more than 4,000 youths in that age group, found those most likely to use drugs and alcohol travelled with peers who also did so, had parents who nagged or were inconsistent about rules, and were more likely to be doing poorly in school.
Among those who had been intoxicated, the average age for their first time was a few months past their 13th birthday — around the same age they were most likely to sample their first joint. The likelihood of drinking and marijuana use increased with age; 66 per cent of 15-year-olds in the study reported consuming at least one drink and 38 per cent said they had smoked pot.

Ummmm… yeah. That’s about how I remember it.
Legal drinking age pretty much depended upon how far from your home town you were. I could drink in the Forget bar at 14, in Kisbey at 16 (the bar was across the street from the hall where we had high school dances, and would fill up during the band breaks).

arcolapub_small.jpg
Patrons’ vehicles, outside the Arcola Hotel, summer 2003. 		You couldn’t get into the Arcola Hotel pub until you were of legal age, because everybody knew what grade you were in.

Not that it mattered. We had a private stock in the high school yearbook room. We drank lemon gin. Out of A&W root beer mugs.

Through A Soda Straw

Military 1 Comment

It’s refreshing to see this in USAToday. Too often these items don’t get any attention at all.

In May of last year, I was sitting with some fellow officers back in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the offensive successful and the country liberated from Saddam. I received a copy of a March 30 U.S. newspaper on Iraq in an old package that had finally made its way to the front. The stories: horror in Nasariyah, faltering supply lines and demonstrations in Cairo. The mood of the paper was impenetrably gloomy, and predictions of disaster abounded. The offensive was stalled; everyone was running out of supplies; we would be forced to withdraw.
The Arab world was about to ignite into a fireball of rage, and the Middle East was on the verge of collapse. If I had read those stories on March 30, I would have had a tough time either restraining my laughter or, conversely, falling into a funk. I was concerned about the bizarre kaleidoscope image of Iraq presented to the American people by writers viewing the world through a soda straw.
Returning to Iraq this past February, I knew that the Marines had a tremendous opportunity to follow through on our promises to the Iraqi people.
Believing in the mission, many Marines volunteered to return. I again found myself in the division headquarters.
Just weeks ago, I read that the supply lines were cut, ammunition and food were dwindling, the “Sunni Triangle” was exploding, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was leading a widespread Shiite revolt, and the country was nearing civil war.
As I write this, the supply lines are open, there’s plenty of ammunition and food, the Sunni Triangle is back to status quo, and Sadr is marginalized in Najaf. Once again, dire predictions of failure and disaster have been dismissed by American willpower and military professionalism.

hat tip – Dr. Joyner.

Rebel With A Mom

Insufferable Twits 4 Comments

“Mitch” was a guest on John Gormley Live this morning, along with his friend “Steve”.
Mitch is a rebel with political interests “from graffiti to the way we are treated as individuals in the school system and that’s why I’m 22 and never graduated but I’m going to make it in this life … hip hop is all about fighting oppression and if we can’t open our art up and nobody donates space on their walls … and it’s against the government not about the people cutting off the phallus symbols of the economic stranglehold of the US.”
In other words, a “tagger”.

Caller: “I fancy myself an artist too. I’d like to get your phone number and address – can I contact you off air so I can come over to put my art on your house?”
Mitch: “No, because it’s my mom’s house, and I don’t own it.”

Dear Laura

Moonbats 43 Comments

Over at the Shotgun, Laura is frightened.

“This is scary shit. The prison abuses are scary shit. All of the lies are scary shit.”

Well, Laura, you found us out. I confess… there is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy[tm] and nobody noticed until now. I know this is true, because, well… I’m in it. And now that you’ve found us out, I’ve been given permission to tell you the rest.
Please, sit down.
There never were any weapons of mass destruction. None. Anywhere. We knew that all along – there never was a Halabja. It was filmed in a remote part of Texas hill country.�Mexican illegals, playing dead for the camera. Rumsfeld directed – he shook Saddam’s hand, didn’t he? It was all fake, Laura. Didn’t you notice the flags were waving? Waving, Laura. There’s no atmosphere in northern Iraq.
It’s Vietnam all over again. Tet. My Lai (did you know it’s pronounced “me lie”?) Soldiers raping babies. Quagmire quagmire quagmire. Bush lied. Bush is stupid. Bush is a chimp. An evil mastermind Nazi puppet chimp who engineered the takeover of America by stealing the election. And he’s ours. We hold the strings.
We murdered Vince Foster, just to watch him die. And so we could blame Hillary.
Udday was gunned down by the capitalist forces of globalization. His hands were in the air, his fingers pleading – “Peace”. He knew the cure for cancer, so they couldn’t let him live. There were panties on his head.
Nick Berg is on a secret tropical island, with his Helliburton pension, golfing with Jack Kennedy and sharing peanut butter and bacon sandwiches with Elvis. Yucking it up with Danny Pearl. There’s a greenish glass jar in the entertainment center, beside the big screen TV. Inside, a Roswell alien floats gently, gently, upside down. A pallid little creature bobbing in a lava lamp. Some sick bastard has slapped a decal on it; “Don’t Mess With Texas”.
“Don’t Mess With Texas”, Laura.
It was all about the oil. It’s always about the oil. Japan was about the oil. Vietnam was about the oil. Panama? Oil.
There are alligators in the sewers of New York. I once had a friend who knew someone who had a Doberman who choked on the finger of a burglar. In the fifties there was a engine that got 200 miles to the gallon but Big Oil stole the plans and murdered the inventor. The drug companies created AIDS through genetic engineering to kill the gays. Ronald Reagan told them to. The WTC towers were taken out by Israeli missiles, there never was a Holocaust and the JEWS RULE THE WORLD!!!
So, Laura, there you have it. You’re free to go. You’ve got the truth now – spread the word. Proclaim it far and wide. Write your newspaper. Nobody will believe you, because…
We’re a vast right wing conspiracy.
And we own the media.

Using The UN Scam for Leverage?

What He Said 1 Comment

Thomas Lifson has his suspicions about what may be going on behind the scenes of UNSCAM.
If true, I suspect it isn’t the first time – there was a rather sudden reversal of position from France, Germany and Russia over their initial refusal to forgive Iraq’s debts a few months ago – despite the warnings of the pundits and political critics who said the exclusion of those countries from bidding on lucrative rebuilding contracts was a self-inflicted foot wound.
Via Instapundit, who as usual, has a great roundup of links

Helprin Is Back

Radioactive 4 Comments

I can say, without any reservation whatsoever, that Mark Helprin is the best fiction writer currently drawing breath.

From Winter’s Tale -“Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic politcal acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.”

Few had heard of Helprin before he penned Bob Dole’s senate retirement speech on the eve of his run for the presidency. (I can’t find it online.) Helprin has other writing available, much of it political. His Written On Water series is archived online at the Wall Street Journal.
One unfortunate consequence of reading Helprin, is that it can be extremely frustrating to read other writers in his wake. A Soldier Of The Great War has had that effect on me, and on others. Judging by discussion on email groups, he has an extremely devoted following – (and frustrated – damn you Helprin – write something…) And it’s interesting to watch the reaction of the leftist, anti-war devotees he draws, who safely assume their favorite genius is likeminded. For someone who writes like this –

“Only in the lightning and in the foreground is the light active. The woman and the soldier steal the light and color from everything that is in ruin. Unclothed and unprotected, with her baby in her arms, she defies the storm unwittingly. Entirely at risk, she shines out. Don’t you understand? She’s his only hope. After what he’s seen, only she and the child can put the world in balance. And yet the soldier is distant, protected, detached. They always say about the soldier that he’s detached. That’s true, for he’s in the eye of the storm, his heart has been broken, and he doesn’t even know it.”

… couldn’t possibly think like this.
Lots of other good stuffat the traffic jam today.

Select Commission On Gettysburg

Not Quite News 2 Comments

Via RWN;

Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Good evening, President Lincoln. The Select Commission on Gettysburg thanks you for taking time out from the Civil War to appear.
Lincoln: You’re welcome, sir. I respect the commission.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Before I get to the blunders at Gettysburg, sir, I must ask about the speech you just gave there dedicating the cemetery. This “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth.” Do you have the?
Lincoln: I know it.
…
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: And yet – and I’ll put this text in the record – there’s not a single reference in this speech to saving the union.
Lincoln: It’s implied.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Not a single reference. Isn’t it a fact that you said in the speech, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..”
Lincoln: Yes, in the first sentence.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: And isn’t it a fact that you say, and again I quote, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” ?
Lincoln: Yes.
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Isn’t it a fact that you were referring to slavery?
Lincoln: Well, yes. But I also said, second paragraph, that they died, quote, “that nation might live.”
Mr. Ben-Gorelick: Yes, but what nation, sir? Clearly, your real goal is to abolish slavery. You took us to war under false pretense, didn’t you, sir?

Go read the whole thing. Priceless “commentary” by Chris Matthews, too… “I’m here with the Gettysburg widows.”

Fuel Economy In Relative Terms

What He Said 3 Comments

Sean at Pol:Spy compares gasoline prices to HP printer ink costs. I’m sort of on the same page as he is.

I get around 12 mpg in my 86 Dodge pickup. As inefficient as that is, I cannot justify replacing it with a newer, fuel efficient car. And I’ve looked into it.

Why not? It’s paid for, and costs 41$ a month to insure. Occassional repairs are part of the deal, but they are inexpensive as repairs go, and used parts are available if need be. The original cost in buying it used ($5K) 5 years ago, and then replacing the engine ($3K) – far less than buying a new or newer car or truck would have been. I don’t think twice about its reliability before taking it to Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago.
The actual cost of a newer vehicle in payments, depreciation and insurance more than eat up any fuel savings, and when you live on a budget in which you have no idea from month to month what your income is going to be – that’s an issue.
And then there’s this: if you think that paying $90 to drive a full size pickup the 6 hours from Saskatoon to Calgary is expensive – try mailing it instead.

Book Reviews

stuff 2 Comments

Amusing when you read these book reviews of “Dark Age Ahead” by Jane Jacobs side by side.

Patrick Watson, Globe And Mail
First among her detested experts are North American traffic engineers. It was Jane Jacobs who led the fight against New York Planner Robert Moses’s proposal to wreck Washington Square by pushing a freeway right through it; and in Toronto, her adopted city since 1969, against the developers who wanted to drive multiple freeways into the heart of the city, clogging and polluting it even more than it is with the resulting rush of one-person cars, developers who in the process wanted to destroy gracious old landmarks, including the St. Lawrence Centre, Union Station and the Old City Hall.
Jacobs recounts a couple of key incidents in which traffic engineers have declared rules of road safety and economics for which they are able to adduce absolutely no evidence, and concludes that in the traffic trade, judgments are often closer to doctrine and superstition than to engineering and science.
“Among other elements that make a congregation of people work as a human community, with the richness of random encounter, gossip and intercourse that nourish collaboration and social invention, Jacobs admires boulevards. Traffic engineers, she writes, declare that boulevards, with their vision- obstructing trees and confusing access roads, are a major cause of accidents, injury and death. But they offer no evidence. And a major international study of boulevards — which in France, Portugal, Buenos Aires and elsewhere contribute graciously to the kind of community in which, in Jacobs’s view, democracy and civility thrive — found zero evidence to support the traffic engineers’ doctrine. Or superstition.”
 
 
 
  		Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times;
Jacobs, who turns 88 this year, has some of the same themes in this book, particularly her criticism of cars. Now a Canadian living in Toronto, she does not drive and does not defer to the interests of those who do. Her book should have been presented as an attack on individual transport, because that is what she wants to discuss.
Her first chapter on the decline in civilization, “Families Rigged to Fail,” might have been about divorce, unwed mothers, absent dads or even the Internet, but instead is about cars. Cars keep people apart. People use cars, she says, because General Motors bought up the streetcar companies in the 1930s “for the sake of selling oil, rubber tires and internal combustion vehicles.” GM was “determined to force unlimited numbers of gasoline-powered, internal-combustion vehicles on America.”
I have one of GM’s vehicles, though I did not know how dastardly the company had been in forcing me to buy it.
The next chapter is about the spread of credentialism in higher education, which might be a fruitful topic. Credentialism, she says, is about qualifying people for jobs, which America has made “the grand cultural purpose of life,” partly with large government programs to create jobs, such as the interstate highway system.
Which is about cars.
The next chapter — this is a book about a new Dark Age, remember — is called “Science Abandoned” and is about how Americans are giving up the scientific way of thinking. This might also be a fruitful topic, about creationism perhaps, or astrology. Instead she steers the reader to traffic management. Cars again! She has discovered that when a road is closed, only some of the traffic is diverted. Some of it disappears. (She is right.) She says the traffic engineers won’t admit that, and are blind to the scientific way of thinking.

Reality Check

Blogging 1 Comment

Someone wrote in my comments:

For every American killed in Iraq, 100 Iraqi wemon [sic] and children should publicly be beheaded. Kill them all.”

Yeah, I have to admit, that there are days when I think of a future in which we sit around on a Saturday evening, drinking wine coolers, thinking of the soft green glow far beyond the eastern horizon and the “Seven Minute War”…
“Darn. Maybe that was overkill.. oh well, no time for second guessing… who knew President Kerry had it in him?…”
Then, I go read Zayed and Alaa and I change my mind.

Two

Radioactive 4 Comments

At only 15.3 hands, he’s small. Nice size for a Quarter horse. Rock Hard Ten and Eddington and most other thoroughbreds tower over him. He’s survived the murder of his trainer and a skull fracture.

They say his pedigree lacks stamina and star power. Secretariat, Foolish Pleasure, Mr Prospector, Northern Dancer – all now generations back. And maybe he does – the mile and half Belmont is yet to come.
But he’s yet to be beaten, on any track, by any rival. He’s won 7 million.
He took the Kentucky Derby in the mud, under a jockey making his first Derby start and a trainer with his first Derby entry.
And he won the Preakness today by 11 1/2 lengths – a new record.
Go, Smarty.

Anonymous Firebombers Charged

Radioactive 1 Comment

CTV news

Three suspects charged in the Montreal firebombing of a Jewish school made a video court appearance today. The two 18-year- old men and a woman in her 30’s entered pleas of not guilty. They’ll be back in court on Monday for a bail hearing.
The men face charges of arson and conspiracy. The woman is charged with being an accomplice after the fact.

Where are the names?
Norm Spector updates: Two men were released after questioning; two others have been charged. They are: Sleman Elmerhebi and Simon Zogheib. Accomplice after the fact is the mother of Elmerhebi, Rouba Fahd Elmerhebi.

“Learn To Take It”

Terrorism 2 Comments

Jihad spokesman says Canadians were mean to Khadrs”

According to a translation of an article written by Abu Ayman al-Hilali, a senior al-Qaeda leader and ideologist, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, and Australia are “enemies” and attacks against their civilians are justified. Since Western governments are engaged in a war against Islam, he argued, the civilian voters who elect those governments cannot be considered non-combatants and are legitimate targets for terrorists.
In an interview in Islamabad yesterday, Mr. Khawaja, who fought with bin Laden in Afghanistan and openly admits he supports jihad activities, provided a rare explanation of why terrorists wish to bring violence to Canada.
Suicide bombers are simply fighting back against the Western assault on their faith and Canadians should just learn to “take it,” he said.
“Today you have the power in your hand. The other day the suicide bomber also has power. So you use your cruise missiles and atom bombs and all that, so he uses his power. So why do you cry at that time? When you say we are fighting a war against you, so better take it then.
“They are also fighting a war against you. They are fighting their way, you are fighting your way. So let’s be happy. But only thing is, your faces are pulled down, you are scared, sitting in America and Canada. You are scared of a man sitting in the cave.”
“We are not scared of you.”

Indeed. With a military that has been emasculated through decades of neglect, a populace polluted with moral relativism, political correctness and anti-Americanism, a government that just defeated an opposition motion to deny Islamic hate monger Sheikh Al-Sudayyis entry into the country to spew his anti-semitic rhetoric, why should they be?
Hell, he’s probably in Martin’s appointment calendar under “photo-op”.

(Update)
Yesterday, Canada’s latest victim of terrorism Islamic fascism died.
Tom Washburn was shot in the neck in an attack in Saudi Arabia 2 weeks ago, where he was working for an oil company. He was 40.


More at the Shotgun

Stop Calling It “Snuff”.

Media 4 Comments

Theresa at Heart Of Canada;

All those site hits on Heart of Canada coming over from Wizbang. How pleasant. Perhaps people coming here will get some perspective on why they shouldn’t watch, link to, or upload the snuff video of Nick Berg’s murder.
It’s interesting that people think watching the video or enabling others to watch it protects their freedom. You know, just because you’re free to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. You have the freedom to engage in ethical decision making and personal restraint, too, and doing so in no way compromises your freedom. In fact, deciding not to do something can be an act of freedom as much as deciding to do something might be — the freedom is in the capacity to decide. People who post the snuff video argue that everyone should have the freedom to decide on their own. Let’s explore that idea.

I couldn’t agree less.
The hosting of the video has little to do with “freedom”.
We are currently witnessing a breathtaking double standard in the media. It is not about the images. It is about the perpetrators. If it were not, there would 30 headlines about Berg in the NYT and WaPo, as there have been about prison abuse. The prison abuse story was broken in January. They reported it then, deep in their pages. There has been no new information that can be revealed by photographs, but it hasn’t stopped them from exploiting them. They weren’t concerned about the allegations of abuse, or the clamour would have started 4 months ago when the DoD announced the investigation.
It’s all about the “dirty” pictures.
a) The Berg video is not a “snuff” film. Stop minimizing its importance and misrepresenting why it was made. Snuff is created for sexual gratification. This is a taped execution, committed for political purposes, by an established group, who have take responsibility for it. Who we are at war with.
b) The argument being put forward by the media over not airing or publishing stills is shown to be lie through their endless parade of prison “porn” photographs. That the Boston Globe and others have been eager to display genuine porn and misrepresent it as American and British misconduct gives proof to that. Most of what has been released amounts to nothing more than different camera angles. This is a feeding frenzy – not responsible journalism.
c) The argument about viewers seeking the video having “honourable reasons” for seeing it is irrelevant – or equally applicable to the prison photographs. They make “prison porn” for sexual gratification too. You cannot have it both ways.
d) Dignity in death. There was no dignity in Nick Berg’s death. None was intended. He was a political sacrifice. Hiding that truth, attempting to create dignity where there is only barbarism and subhumanity is dangerous and naive.
If this were a single, isolated murder by an outraged lover or sadistic serial killer, the argument not to show the video would be sound.
In this case, it is not. This is the face of our enemy and we need to see it.

Religion Of Demolition

Radioactive No Comments

Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State, has ordered the demolition of all churches in the state, as he launched the second phase of his Sharia project yesterday.
Speaking at the launch in Gusau, the state capital, Governor Sani disclosed that time was ripe for full implementation of the programme as enshrined in the Holy Quran.
He added that his government would soon embark on demolition of all places of worship of unbelievers in the state, in line with Islamic injunction to fight them wherever they are found.

Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state, but the Governer has been instituting Sharia law since 2000. Other states are following suit.

Governor Sani also made the retention of a long beard a condition for securing juicy contracts from the state government.

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